Students with harsh experience of life in lockdown

Three third-level Palestinian students, who came to Galway last year on Irish Government scholarships could never have predicted the restrictions they would face during their academic year here. But growing up in Gaza and the West Bank has left these modern young women well-prepared for the crisis as they enjoy new freedoms. They talk to CIARAN TIERNEY.

The idea that they would face lockdowns, school closures, and travel restrictions after swapping life in one of the most troubled places on earth for Galway never entered the minds of three young women from Palestine when they arrived here this time last year.

Little could Palestinian students Faten Sourani (Gaza), Ruba Ayyad (Bethlehem), and Tala Zeitawi (Ramallah) have imagined the restrictions they would face due to the coronavirus pandemic as they began a new academic year in the West of Ireland last September.

The three post-graduate students, who were on Irish Government scholarships to NUI Galway and the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), could hardly have envisaged how much life would change in the space of a few months.

Excited by the prospect of a year away from their war-torn country, and full of expectations about meeting new people and learning new skills, they instead found their classmates leaving for home and the city shutting down when Ireland went into lockdown in mid-March.

Mindful of concerns over their own family members back home, and keen to continue with their studies after travelling so far for the year, they watched housemates move out, classes move online, and Galway lose the vibrancy and sense of freedom they had come to enjoy.

Suddenly, Tala, a film student at GMIT, found she could no longer travel to Maree, Oranmore, where she was making a documentary about the benefits of social farming for people with disabilities. With farmer Colm O’Dowd and facilitators Eilish McInerney and Deirdre Bennett, the focus of her film was to highlight the differences in facilities between Palestine and Ireland.

Tala and her friend Ruba, who was studying Gender, Globalisation, and Human Rights at NUIG, were both living at an apartment block in Shop Street, in the heart of Galway, which suddenly became very quiet during lockdown. Apart from the sound of seagulls foraging for food, the place had an eerie hush for weeks on end.

“When the lockdown started, we were in shock. We were used to Galway being lively with all the music and all the people around us. Then, when we went out of our city centre apartments, we didn’t see anyone apart from the seagulls. It got to the point where everything was really quiet and we could only hear the seagulls at night,” says Tala.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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